Tube DIY Asylum

RE: Ping Jim McShane & Michael Samra

97.84.159.168

In Reply to: RE: Ping Jim McShane & Michael Samra posted by Ben on June 01, 2008 at 23:25:22

Ben
I don't know if we are the only ones to hear them especially since quite a few people now have both McShaned Macs and Citations.
Remember the heart of any amp is the power supply.I love vintage amps and being I have electrostatic speakers,I needed more powerful vintage iron.
When I bought my first citation 2,I did the Sheldon stokes mod because it was a circuit board and it was easy to install and it worked great,at least I thought it did but I was wrong..It didnt address things like a good ground scheme and noise factor was very evident on ESLs as they reveal the noise by a factor of 10 or more.
After talking to a few people I decided to get Jim's cit 2 PS kits and I installed them and the amp really came to life..Of course I put new coupling caps in and I started doing other things like putting Hexfred diodes and low tolerance carbon film and precision resistors.
My mac mc60s were sounding very distorted and lopsided and just overall like trash for a few years at that point and the citation 2 sounded so pure and exciting and I was pissed to say the least.
I had people like Elektron and Doug Pak protector telling me I need to change the filter caps and blue print the mac amps and I did that and it sounded Much better but it wasnt as good as the citation 2 at that point.
I thought since the Mac amps are much like the citation 2 in that they have about 28db total feedback but its mostly localized and the actual global FB is like 4 to 6db.and they are beam pentodes from the same era,I thought what the hell lets give it a try.I decided to do the mc240 first and I will tell you when I got done putting in the cit 2 McShane kit in the mc240,I heard a mac amp for the first time in my life inspite of owning them for 25 years.It sounded just like the Citation and it had control and definition and charisma that I have NEVER heard in the Macs to that point and I got on the phone and started calling everybody I knew to brag like a kid at xmas time.
Anyway the citations and the Macs after installing Jim's power supply kit and using good diodes and good coupling caps,can rival any amp out there AFAIC costing thousands of dollars and beat them when put on the proper load.They sound a lot alike although the citation is Class A and the mac is A/B,they just seem to do everything right..
I had posted an almost perfect 20khz sq wave of each amp at 3/4 of their rated power and both the amps sound pure and well managed and imaged superbly.What more could you ask for? You do have to do Jim's power supply and ground scheme to the macs with the doublers to get the best performance like the Duece and you will be in heaven.Its like it was made for the Macs and Citations..
I did use the same k40 and vitamin q pio caps in cit 2 and the mc240 and a pair mc75s and an mc225.There was a recent post on an mc225 I had just did and that was with the cit 2 Power supply kit of Jims.
They all(amps) sound similar and yet they all sound somewhat different but boy Jim's power supply is the trick to both brands of amps.Maybe Jim will chime in.

It doesn't matter how you stir
the pot, Bullshit in always equals Bullshit out!!

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